Apple Updates G5 Firmware, ARD Client; Not MPEG-2 Decoder

obirt writes "A G5 firmware update provides changes for initializing and running your Power Mac G5. It provides some performance improvements for some PCI-X configurations, patches a security hole and improves fan behavior in Open Firmware." sandrift writes "Software Update just popped up with a new version of the Apple Remote Desktop Client; the version 1.2.4 update delivers improvements to security, performance, and reliability of the Apple Remote Desktop 1.2 client software running on Mac OS X versions 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3." ARD Client is included with Mac OS X 10.3. tdemark writes "MPEG-2 decoding is not supported by default in QuickTime; it is added by purchasing an additional component. Those of us that have this component discovered that it stopped working as of yesterday; it will not run after December 14, 2003. The suggested workaround is to set your clock back. VideoLAN can also be used in emergencies while Apple fixes the issue."

Comments

Re:VLC gives better playback anyway!

[Pope]

Already people balk at paying the US$30 for QT Pro just to get full screen playback, $100 would be too much.

Re:No B-frames in QuickTime

[Alan Partridge]

I think users would GLADLY pay $100 for a full featured QT Player - the situation as it stands now is that Apple is perceived as requiring you to pay $30 just for full screen playback. Now you and I know that QT Pro gives you a hell of a lot more than that, but the continued inability to encode to MPEG1 (you get a free VCD compliant encoder with Toast!), MPEG1 Layer 2 and 3 (how many freeware/shareware encoders have this?) and MPEG2 (as you say, you get the components with "Pro" apps) - not to mention the crappy resize and resample offered by QT Player. I wish Apple would realise that QT is in a battle to the DEATH with WinMedia - if MS ever decides to fill out their architecture to include support for post production applications, QT will die. It's time for Apple to get all those encoding features into QT Pro, and to be up front about how much the license fees cost for those various encoding abilities.

And not dealing with out-of-order data is something that Apple SHOULD have been resolving now since MPEG1 playback was added - Sorensen 3 b-frames brought the matter to a high pitch of inconvenience, and Apple should have made their changes THEN, not now.

QuickTime lost to Windows Media a long time ago

[benwaggoner]

Actually, I think Apple quit trying to fight Windows Media quite a while ago. They're not pushing or enhancing the .mov file format anymore - the best codec available is still Sorenson Video 3, which shipped two and a half years ago.

QuickTime's importance to Apple today is much more as a digital media SDK, and hence the foundation of their very successful products like iMovie, iDVD, Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, iTunes, iPhoto, etcetera.

QuickTime is also the best authoring architecture out there, with wonderful features like reference movies.

But as a delivery format, Apple has been letting it linger, but isn't putting much effort into enhancing it. They've talked a lot about MPEG-4 being the future of the file format, but haven't done much technically to make that viable either.